It’s the same as with Linux, GIMP, LibreOffice or OnlyOffice. Some people are so used to their routines that they expect everything to work the same and get easily pissed when not.
This isn’t just open-source software; it’s also a collection of servers run by hobbyists.
There is no business here at all. You’re not the product, but you’re also not the customer — because there is no customer. What you’re seeing here is a strictly nonprofit Internet service provided by people who just want to make one.
Which makes Karen behaviour even worse and incomprehensible but most people are humble and don’t care to much about some minor problems and a little learning curve
the slight technical competency needed to navigate the fediverse might help keep low-quality users away and mitigate the “summer reddit” effect.
Oh God I hope so ha ha
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I’m hoping the same lol
I don’t know what “Karen behavior” means; could you explain?
A Karen is a (mostly female) person who demands special treatment for no specific reason, who permanently feels mistreated and set back compared to others and someone who always wants to talk to the highest available employee in expectation this person would take her side and take inappropriate measures against the one that “did her wrong”
I’m always struggling to find appropriate words to explain what a Karen is and often fall back to a video as an explanation. Your definition is quite accurate and simple. I will keep it in mind.
Okay. I don’t see how that stereotype relates to Lemmy or FOSS, though?
I’ve seen some very demanding posts asking for this or that feature completely missing out on the fact that
a) Lemmy is written by people in their free time and
b) hosted on servers paid by individuals or through donations.
Imho it seems not uncommon to take the free part of FOSS for granted but still expecting to be treated like a paying customer.People easily forget what they’ve already got and want more, that’s were I see this stereotype.
A “karen” is a person who comes across as entitled and demanding, beyond the scope of what is generally accepted.
Meanwhile I’ve been messing around with Linux the past week and it got me installing decentralized apps on my android lol.
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Hmmm, fuck those people honestly
As someone who used Reddit when it was first released, Lemmy is 10x better than Reddit v0.1 and obviously better than current Reddit.
better? there is still so much subreddit not migrating here, saying it is better is just exaggeration
It’s not like all those subreddits existed at 0.1 though.
then say it better when lemmy trully already have everything instead of saying it now ? you dont acknowledge a toddler as master degree even if later they could take master degree, you call them as their current state which is toddler
Seemed like this discussion was about the technical capabilities, not the user generated content. Anyway if you compare the beginning of reddit (e.g., the early days after digg’s implosion) to lemmy today, I’d bet lemmy is doing just fine on the content side too. And even leaving that aside, there’s a quality over quantity aspect in the discussions that heavily leans in lemmy’s favor.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. I was referring specifically to performance metrics. Reddit v0.1 was down and crashing constantly.
I guess as a user I didn’t see the back-of-house tools for mods and admins, but so far Lemmy is at least competitive. There are risks with server security and threat of being hacked, along with the size of the team.
There are risks with server security and threat of being hacked
[]. I’m a security professional (my day job involves auditing code). I had a look through the Lemmy source (I’m also a Rust developer) and didn’t see anything there that would indicate any security issues. They made good architecture decisions (from a security perspective).NOTES ABOUT LEMMY SECURITY:
User passwords are hashed with bcrypt which isn’t quite as good a choice as argon2 but it’s plenty good enough (waaaaay better than most server side stuff where developers who don’t know any better end up using completely inappropriate algorithms like SHA-256 or worse stuff like MD5). They hard-coded the use of
DEFAULT_COSTwhich I think is a mistake but it’s not a big deal (maybe I’ll open a ticket to get that changed to a configurable parameter after typing this).I have some minor nitpicks with the variable naming which can lead to confusion when auditing the code (from a security perspective). For example:
form_with_encrypted_password.password_encrypted = password_hash;A hashed password is not the same thing as an “encrypted password”. An “encrypted password” can be reversed if you have the key used to encrypt it. A hashed password cannot be reversed without spending enormous amounts of computing resources (and possibly thousands of years in the case of bcrypt atDEFAULT_COST). A trivial variable name refactoring could do wonders here (maybe I should submit a PR).From an OWASP common vulnerabilities standpoint Lemmy is protected via the frameworks it was built upon. For example, Lemmy uses Diesel for Object Relational Mapping (ORM, aka “the database framework”) which necessitates the use of its own syntax instead of making raw SQL calls. This makes it so that Lemmy can (in theory) work with many different database back-ends (whatever Diesel supports) but it also completely negates SQL injection attacks.
Lemmy doesn’t allow (executable) JavaScript in posts/comments (via various means not the least of which is passing everything through a Markdown compiler) so cross-site scripting vulnerabilities are taken care of as well as Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF).
Cookie security is handled via the
jsonwebtokencrate which uses a randomly-generated secret to sign all the fields in the cookie. So if you tried to change something in the cookie Lemmy would detect that and throw it out the whole cookie (you’d have to re-login after messing with it). This takes care of the most common session/authentication management vulnerabilities and plays a role in protecting against CSRF as well.Lemmy’s code also validates every single API request very robustly. It not only verifies that any given incoming request is in the absolute correct format it also validates the timestamp in the user’s cookie (it’s a JWT thing).
Finally, Lemmy is built using a programming language that was engineered from the ground up to be secure (well, free from bugs related to memory management, race conditions, and unchecked bounds): Rust. The likelihood that there’s a memory-related vulnerability in the code is exceptionally low and Lemmy has tests built into its own code that validate most functions (clone the repo and run
cargo testto verify). It even has a built-in test to validate that tampered cookies/credentials will fail to authenticate (which is fantastic–good job devs!).REFERENCES:
- Use of
DEFAULT_COST: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/050216eed97380c8c1682ba065cf5e62f0961934/crates/db_schema/src/impls/local_user.rs#L18C20-L18C32 - How actix-web stores cookies: https://docs.rs/actix-web/latest/actix_web/cookie/struct.Cookie.html
jsonwebtokenEncodingKey: https://docs.rs/jsonwebtoken/8.3.0/jsonwebtoken/struct.EncodingKey.html
It not only verifies that any given incoming request is in the absolute correct format it also validates the timestamp in the user’s cookie (it’s a JWT thing).
This is false.
Lemmy’s JWTs are forever tokens that do not expire. They do not have any expiration time. Here is the line of code where they disable JWT expiration verification.
Lemmy’s JWTs are sent via a cookie and via a URL parameter. Pop open your browser console and look at it.
There is no way to revoke individual sessions other than changing your password.
If you are using a JWT cookie validation does not matter, you need to have robust JWT validation. Meaning JWTs should have short expiration times (~1hr), should be refreshed regularly, and should be sent in the header.
When I said, “it validates the timestamp” I wasn’t talking about the JWT
expclaim (which you’re correct in pointing out that Lemmy doesn’t use). I was talking about how JWT works: The signature is generated from the concatenation of the content of the message which includes theiat(Issued-at) timestamp. The fact that the timestamp is never updated after the user logs in is neither here nor there… You can’t modify the JWT message (including theiattimestamp) in Lemmy’s cookie without having it fail validation. So what I said is true.The JWTs don’t have an expiration time but the cookie does… It’s set to one year which I believe is the default for
actix-web. I’m surprised that’s not configurable.You actually can invalidate a user’s session by forcibly setting their
validator_timein the database to some date before their last password reset but that’s not really ideal. Lemmy is still new so I can’t really hold it against the devs for not adding a GUI feature to forcibly invalidate a user’s sessions (e.g. in the event their cookie was stolen).I also don’t like this statement of yours:
If you are using a JWT cookie validation does not matter, you need to have robust JWT validation. Meaning JWTs should have short expiration times (~1hr), should be refreshed regularly, and should be sent in the header.
Cookie validation does matter. It matters a lot! Real-world example: You’re using middleware (or an application firewall, load balancer, or similar) that inserts extra stuff into the cookie that has nothing at all to do with your JWT payload. Stuff like that may require that your application verify (or completely ignore) all sorts of things outside of the JWT that exist within the cookie.
Also, using a short expiration time in an app like Lemmy doesn’t make sense; it would be super user-unfriendly. The user would be asked to re-login basically every time they tried to visit a Lemmy instance if they hadn’t used it in <some time shorter than an hour like you suggested>. Remember: This isn’t for message passing it’s for end user session tracking. It’s an entirely different use case than your typical JWT stuff where one service is talking with another.
In this case Lemmy can definitely do better:
- Give end users the ability to invalidate all logged in sessions without forcing a password reset.
- Make the cookie expiration time configurable.
When using JWT inside of a cookie (which was not what JWT was meant for if we’re being honest) there’s really no point to using the
expclaim since the cookie itself has its own expiration time. So I agree with the Lemmy dev’s decision here; it’d just be pointless redundant data being sent with every single request.Now let me rant about a JWT pet peeve of mine: It should not require Base64 encoding! OMFG talk about pointless wastes of resources! There’s only one reason why JWT was defined to require Base64 encoding: So it could be passed through the
Authorizationheader in an HTTP request (because JSON allows characters that HTTP headers do not). Yet JWT’s use case goes far beyond being used in HTTP headers. For example, if you’re passing JWTs over a WebSocket why the fuck would you bother with Base64 encoding? It’s just a pointless extra step (and adds unnecessary bytes)! Anyway…
I have nothing to add, just wanted to give a kudos on the epic comment.
nice write up! thanks :D
- Use of
I’m using wefwef right now, and its all running pretty smoothly. No complaints here
Maybe im used to Boost on reddit but damn, does it feel weird to vote/reply using 3 dots on the right lol.
Yes, exactly! That’s my main grip with wefwef, same as not being able to swipe right to exit a thread and go back to the feed.
But most of the current apps lack some sort of behaviour customizations we’re used to, so I’m keeping two or three of them checked in case of updates.
wefwef.app votes with swipes from the left. Short swipe to upvote, long swipe to downvote
Im pretty sure all these apps got created just this month so they would obviously not be feature complete yet, when i joined the only apps were jerboa and mlem
Thank goodness I’m not the only one with this problem! I’ve gotten into the habit of sliding right from the lines in between posts, but imo this should be taken care of(especially to imitate the quality greatness that was the Apollo app).
Update: this is fixed in the latest Lemmy update.
You’re upvoting wrong, my friend.
Try sliding the comment / post from left to right. Slide further to downvote.
I have seen wefwef cited a bit now, what is it? Forgive my ignorance, but I’m new to Lemmy and I’m still learning. It is not an app, is it a website? I have tried to connect to wefwef.net but with no success, so I’m a bit confused.
It’s lemmy client. It’s perfect in every way. Check it out at wefwef.app
Is it an app or only a website?
You can install it as an app. I don’t know about iOS, but on Android go to wefwef.app, click the three dots in the top right, and click the install button, and it will appear to be just like any other app.
Thanks! Now on WefWef!
Thanks! Now on WefWef!
It’s very similar on IOS. Press the “share” icon and select “Add to Home Screen”.
It’s a website that you can install as an app on your phone. That’s called a “Progressive Web App” (PWA).
Workplace’ WiFi was blocking it, now I managed to get it installed. Seems nice, thanks for the help!
I’ve installed it and quite like it on first feel. However for the love of god I can’t find the subscribe button when clicking on a community, care to point it out what I’m (obviously) missing?
When you are on the community view, not inside a discussion: Top right ellipses (three dots) > Subscribe
Ooh thanks!
Welcome!
wefwef.app works for me
wefwef.app works for me
My only issues is with when returning to all posts it freezes sometimes. But that can be due to I’m on iPhone and this is PWA
Memmy is great too, and also on both Android and iOS
You do have to build it yourself for Android right now though, hope it’ll be on the playstore soon.
Same on my iPhone. Hope they fix that in the next couple of weeks.
Well thats true for all software - being free/libre or not. It just takes time to get used to it.
For example, when I get a new phone - I spend the next months complaining over how much better the previous one was, until I dont.
Sometimes though it’s major issues that turn people away. I’ve always loved the idea of Linux, but I’ve never been able to adopt it fully. I’ve tried multiple times and this current time is no different then before. It’s always some major thing that’s broken that no amount of research/troubleshooting that fixes it. At this current moment, my steam install won’t download games to my secondary disks. No matter what I change. It’s running mostly fine otherwise.
People like good software that behaves intuitively, news at 11.
Right after our astronomer predictions if the sol star will rise tomorrow.
Bad design that is so common you think it’s intuitive is still bad design
I’ve been here since the blackout and everything is great, apart from a few times when the site seemed a bit slow. I don’t even miss reddit anymore.
Try using an instance close to your house, with good ping. It makes a huge difference.
Go to https://fediverse.observer/map and select Lemmy instances.
I think that for Lemmy and Linux the problem is actually in the people using it. Without people using it, they won’t be many posts/good software support. Without the posts/support there won’t be many users. It’s not some UI being different, or anything else. It’s the main issue. When you see lemmy.world frontpage (All, not Local), there are 15 threads about Reddit and Lemmy, 2 about Twitter limits and the rest is about tech. Meanwhile, on r/popular you have variety of communities, still mostly memes and videos but there are also other posts.
It’s more about reddit that reddit is. You can’t make it long-term with this type of content. On other instances it’s more bearable, but it’s still not enough to keep people here.
Clearly you have never used Arch Linux then - Arch Wiki is truly marvelous.
Likely the problem is more with people not willing to learn anything new, unless forced to do so, because that will break their routines and many are aversive of that.
The thing is if they want people to migrate they should do something about it
The problem is it takes time and money to do that, which you can’t really get without some kind of structure. I’ve been wondering what a tech cooperative might look like lately. All the weight of a company like reddit, but owned by the users
Okay but there is no profit incentive to increase migration so either you do or you don’t
There is no one here trying to suck your ass to get ad revenue
It’s not only the break in routine but also the direction of the site. All your examples are productivity products while the fediverse is, in essence, social media. The thing with social media is that branding REALLY matters. There have been attempts to copy Instagram or Snapchat or Reddit but they have all failed to gain massive communities due to not being part of a known brand.
“I posted my pics on the gram”
“What’s your snap?” etc…
Kbin, Lemmy, these are just instances of something called the Fediverse, try getting a layperson to understand that.
Social media generally has a rule known as the 90:9:1 rule. 90% of people are lurkers just doomscrolling or passing time, 9% are interacting with content and leaving comments and/or posting, and the final 1% is making the engaging content that sites like Reddit and YouTube are known for.
Right now, FOSS software is often populated by only 10% of that ratio, the power-users and people that interact every so often. Those lurkers, the 90%, migrating them will be hard if not impossible. Remember, they lurk, they will stay where the most engaging content is, and that is still currently Reddit.
My biggest takeaway with open source projects is this:
Theres there’s a HUGE jump from being power user friendly to being user friendly in general. Significantly bigger than the jump from dev/contributor users to power users.
UX is something huge companies spend a lot of time and money on to ensure the layman can use the software well, something open source developers do not have the luxury of caring about from the get go.
Power users do not recognize the inbuilt muscle memory they have acquired over time to get around some of the more nagging aspects of the software and get frustrated with new users for not doing the same, while these new users get frustrated at things not being straightforward, or similar to some other software they’re used to.
IMO this push and pull is what is truly preventing a Linux desktop experience that is truly layman friendly. But when it works, and an open source project can slowly start putting more of their time into UX when the project is more mature, then it truly starts kicking ass.
Look at how far Blender has come since the 3.0 update. A lot of studios are straight up switching to it for a lot of work that was traditionally Max or Maya based. Obviously you still have some of the “old guard” who felt a little alienated with the sweeping changes from 2.7 to 3, but I feel blender is objectively better for most people since then.
TL;DR: OSS always deals with different competing needs for power users vs regular users, but given enough time things get smoothened out
I think even the jump between 2.7 and 2.8 is huge in terms of user-friendliness and aesthetics, but yeah over time Blender has gotten way more features and support. Hell, it supported ARM Macs way before Maya did, and the latter only got ARM support earlier this year. I expected Apple to fully complete their transition before Autodesk managed to pull it off.
I was with you until GIMP. If one more person lists it as an alternative to Photoshop I’m gonna lose it. It’s UI is terrible, you have to watch a guide just to get started. Can’t read PSDs in any viable way. I’m sure people use it just fine but to call it an alternative to Photoshop is just plain lying.
Edit: the other thing I dislike about it being suggested as a replacement is that it assumes you work alone. Anyone on a team with people in PS will not be able to even attempt to use GIMP to get work done.
I 100% agree, I actually hate GIMP almost as much as I hate Photoshop.
Paint.net is a significantly better software for light to medium image manipulation, and Affinity is what I’d say is an actual replacement for Photoshop. Affinity isn’t by any means FOSS but you can’t win them all.
Photopea on the other hand is amazing
What do we say instead of r/woosh now?
We don’t.
Just woosh, like a normal person.
The better alternative to Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign is Affinity. And yeah, while it’s not actually free, you only have to pay once and everything is yours.
Or for quick free edits, Photopea.
Upvote for photopea.com it’s crazy how much functionality it has, love that site.
Absolutely amazing software, 10000/10
You also need a guide to get going in PS, its just a different App but fulfills the same tasks
It fills some of the same tasks.
Which tasks is Photoshop capable of and GIMP is not?
Something I use a ton: smart objects, smart masks, smart filters. Non destructive actions where I can still edit the original and have all previous items applied in a separate file or view in real time.
Those aren’t tasks. those are tools.
A task would be if to give us an example of an “end result” that you can accomplish in PS that you can’t in GIMP.
Not what tools you use to make it. But the content that comes out the other end.
I’m not going to argue that PS has some extra tools that make stuff easier to do. It has the resources to develop them, after all.
But there is no drawing, animation, photo edit, composition or other end product that you can ONLY do with Photoshop. The only people who say that are people who have never used any alternative.
So my point is still valid that GIMP is not an alternative to Photoshop. It would be like saying this screwdriver is an alternative to this toolset. People coming from Photoshop aren’t looking at the singular goal of image manipulation.
OK but thats a workflow problem, that’s not a missing design tool.
Well these tools are in Photoshop and not GIMP. You can’t just hand wave that away as not GIMPs fault.
Well its still not a image manipulation feature missing. It’s a workflow feature. You could also just copy a layer. But in the end, Photoshop has no image manipulation feature that is really missing in GIMP, you can export the same result picture.
Photoshop doesn’t have a native G’MIC plugin feature. You can’t wave that away as not Adobes fault!
That’s how stupid you sound.
Different products have different features and different ways to do things. It’s not Gimp’s sole purpose to just clone every feature from Photoshop. It’s not a Photoshop clone, it’s a piece of software in its own right.
Gimp makes great use of the amazing G’Mic filter tool. Adobe doesn’t. That doesn’t make Gimp better than Photoshop.
Different software makes different choices and people choose whichever they want to use and shut the hell up about it.
The problem with GIMP is not its features, it’s how they were implemented. The software isn’t intuitive like Photoshop.
It’s an alternative image manipulation software. It’s not a great replacement for PS though.
Use Krita as an alternative! 💕
You wretched Photoshop enthusiast. How dare you defile the sacred realm of pixelated beauty with your blasphemous tools of the Adobe empire! You, who bathe in the deceptive allure of layers and filters, know nothing of the humble struggle of a true purist.
While you revel in your so-called “advanced” software, I, a virtuous wielder of MS Paint, have embarked on an arduous journey. Armed only with a pixelated brush and limited color palette, I navigate the treacherous seas of artistry. Each stroke, deliberate and purposeful, carries the weight of my soul, for I am a master of simplicity.
Do you not understand the profound joy that arises from conquering the challenge of transforming mere pixels into a masterpiece? With each painstaking click, I breathe life into my creations, shaping reality with the precision of a pixel whisperer. Your Photoshop may grant you an abundance of tools, but it lacks the purity and authenticity that flows through the veins of my MS Paint.
Gimp, you say? Ah, a mere imitation of the great MS Paint, seeking validation in the realm of Photoshop. It too shall crumble beneath the weight of its pretentious ambitions. For true artistry lies not in the abundance of options, but in the mastery of limitations.
So, my misguided foe, before you spew your haughty words, remember the legacy of MS Paint. It has endured the test of time, witnessed the rise and fall of software giants, and remained steadfast in its simplistic grandeur. While your Photoshop may dazzle the masses with its flashy tricks, it is MS Paint that stands as the guardian of true artistic purity.
